Figure in Gray
by Erebus1999
Summary: It is not possible to erase a person from time entirely. Lord Voldemort does not know this when he tries to do so to Harry Potter. He just wants his soul shard out of Harry Potter's forehead. The Figure in Gray will be sure to inform him of that though. Right before he kills the Dark Lord, of course.
1. Figure in Gray: Prologue

**Figure in Gray**

Erebus1999

 **Disclaimer:** **The world of Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling and who** **mever else she has sold the rights to, and I make no claim to it.**

 **Author's Note:** **For those of you who hate author's notes, let it be known that this will likely be the longest of the story, and also the only one at the start of a chapter. All of the other notes I will ensure are at the end of their respective chapters, to keep them safely out of the way. They will all also be bolded, as this one is to differentiate them from regular story text. There will be a short farewell note at the end of this chapter to get myself in the habit.**

 **So, this story's publish date indicates it was initially posted sometime in October of 2018. It is now April of 2019 and it still has one chapter, despite this author's note clearly indicating it has been updated. Repeatedly in fact. As it happens, that is because this is probably the fourth or fifth version of the Prologue I am posting. Each time I post it it seems like I find a bunch of problems and go back to rewrite it. As I am a college student with remarkable time demands and a slow writer to boot, rewriting takes a significant amount of time, although in the future I hope to cut that time down some.**

 **Anyways, this particular story is the culmination of months of world-building (you all didn't think those months of me rewriting the Prologue endlessly were _just_ that, did you?), a number of tropes I think I can do better, a few I created for the hell of it, and a rabid plot bunny that just won't leave my head. The plotting of this story is already a mess, and I have yet to really get started. Should be fun!**

 **I will also be using this as an exercise to improve my ability to write (and possibly even speed it up some, God knows it needs it). I am generally quite a verbose person, and my writing generally matches that so expect a lot of description, especially since one of my main characters goes out of his way not to speak. Regardless, I write what I want to see. I happen to want to see this.**

 **I'll stop typing this note now. Enjoy! Or don't. That's your prerogative.**

 **oo0ooOoo0oo**

 **Prologue**

 _ **1 July 1995  
**_ _Evening_

For several decades now, the residents of the town of Little Hangleton had done their very best to ignore the once-gorgeous, now decaying carcass of the Riddle House where it squatted on the hill outside of town. In fact, recently all of them seemed to have forgotten about it entirely. If they looked up at the hilltop for any reason at all, their eyes merely skated sightlessly over the rotting wooden shutters, the boarded-up windows, the sagging lead roof, and _especially_ over the men in black cloaks and silver masks standing guard at the mildewed doors.

Within the formerly-grand ballroom of the formerly-grand Riddle House there was an enormous, finely carved black chair, so large and ornate as to be almost a throne.

And on this throne, red eyes closed and snakelike visage relaxed, sat the Dark Lord Voldemort reborn. He had stated he was not to be disturbed hours earlier.

As a result of his order, the two cloaked and masked Death Eaters stationed inside of the closed doors of the ballroom stood very still, hardly moving. If they somehow drew their lord's attention at the wrong moment, they could very well experience the Cruciatus curse, and neither wished for that. The Dark Lord's curses left one trembling for days afterwards, were he in the mood.

Fortunately for them, Lord Voldemort's attention was firmly focused inwards, to the exclusion of the outside world. The Dark Lord was meditating to find his center. After the destruction of his body fourteen years prior, all of the defenses he had painstakingly erected around his mind had crumbled, lost without the anchor of flesh and blood.

Now, only days after his resurrection, Voldemort was still rebuilding the defenses protecting his mind. Occlumency, the art of defending one's mind, was a complex, many-leveled ability that he had done his utmost to master.

The simplest form of Occlumency, the clearing of one's mind in such a way that intruders could find nothing, Voldemort had surpassed decades before whilst he had still attended Hogwarts. The more advanced version, the superior version, consisted of barriers of magic anchored to the body, sustained without constant concentration and nearly impossible to break. These, however, required not-insignificant skill in magic, wandless, wanded and otherwise, to construct and were therefore rarely seen. The only other person Voldemort had ever seen with similar barriers was Severus Snape, and his were not nearly so impressive, even if they were near-impenetrable.

Such barriers of magic around the mind took time to erect, and as a result Voldemort had been meditating for the last four days. The days before that were occupied with organizing his remaining Death Eaters and warding the Riddle House so that it could not be found, ensuring his safety whilst he rebuilt his strength.

His resurrection, disastrous though the end may have been, was ultimately successful, if tiring. He, Lord Voldemort, once more walked the Earth in all his glory!

Those not in his service did not see his greatness though. They thought (futile though it may be) that they could oppose, could _stop_ his return and rightful takeover of Britain. He would prove them wrong!

They could, however, delay him Voldemort admitted. At least for a time. He could not truly move, could not execute his grand plan, until the prophecy that had lead to his downfall so long ago was found. He refused to allow Fate to interfere again. His first order of business had to be to discover the rest of the wording of that prophecy, then kill the Potter boy to show that none who stand in Lord Voldemort's way live to speak of it.

With a loud, mental _snap_ , the last barrier of magic around his mind anchored into place. He was done! Voldemort played tendrils of his magic over the incorporeal walls protecting him, searching for gaps and openings that may not have been closed.

He found an opening, but only one as he expected. This link, this crack, lead to the piece of soul he had left within Nagini. Most would consider placing a part of one's soul within a living creature to be unsafe. After all, should the host die the soul-piece would be lost.

This was, of course, true, but the _control_ he had over Nagini was incredible! He could use the link to possess her, to guide her to complete tasks that could not be completed by any other living being. He carefully analyzed the opening in his mind, ensuring that despite there being a lack of defenses there it could not be utilized against him, before moving on.

Voldemort continued playing his tendrils of magic over the walls of his mind, caressing the link to Nagini again before moving on, running along smooth wall, a joint here, and another crack leading to another living Horcr—

Wait! He had not gifted a _second_ creature with the glorious task of holding part of his soul. What was this? He had not done this, and none of his inanimate Horcruxes had had any opportunity to possess a person. At least, he thought not. Voldemort thought briefly over the protections of each, searching for a way they could become active. Which one could it be?

Slytherin's Locket was safely ensconced in the cave where his army of Inferi was stored. The Inferi were not suitable hosts for the soul-piece within the Locket however, so that could not be. It must still be safe.

The Gaunt Ring was not more than a few kilometers away, in the ruins of the Gaunt Shack. He would know if something came across it, and whatever did would die anyways. That Withering curse he had found on his travels in the Caribbean would ensure that.

The Diadem of Ravenclaw was securely in the Room of Lost Things. He had looked in the records of Hogwarts, and found no mention of the room. He was the only person to find it and understand its secrets in hundreds of years. Even if someone did find the Diadem by some twist of destiny, the compulsion on it would force whoever did find it into wearing it and dying to the desiccation curse cast upon it.

The Cup of Hufflepuff was locked into Bellatrix's Gringotts vault. While it had no protections apart from those Bellatrix had surely placed upon it, the defenses of Gringotts were formidable and would guarantee its safety. No goblin would touch the cup while it was within a vault, so it must still be inactive.

His Diary, his first Horcrux, was regrettably lost. Lucius was still bedridden as a result of his displeasure on hearing of its destruction, even if it was in an ill-fated effort to return him to life. So what could this link to yet another soul-piece be? All of the ones he was aware of were accounted for.

Voldemort rather disliked just charging ahead, but in this case there was no other real solution. This crack in his mind's defenses could not be left open, and unless he knew what was on the other side of the link he could not even begin to close it.

He would just have to shove some magic at the link and see what it showed him. Surely his mind's defenses were sufficient to block any attack through the gap that may come.

Lord Voldemort gathered his magic, forged it into a narrow tendril. He did not want to possess the being holding part of his soul. He merely wished to identify it, locate it, and then find some way of removing his piece of soul into something else. One living Horcrux that could be relatively easily killed was truly enough.

He pushed his little tendril of magic, of thought, into the bridge between his two soul parts, looking for identity, for location. He expected to see a forest, trees. Perhaps during his time as a wraith part of his soul was left behind in an animal he possessed only for a time and thus left alive?

A white owl in a cage. A tiny room full of trash. Bars on a window, a rickety desk next to a bed. An enormously fat walrus of a man next to a whale of a son. What was this? _Had_ one of his Horcruxes activated somehow? Impossible! Their protections were too great. There must be something else. He would have to check again, better. His touch was too light to pick up memories that would allow him to identify the host.

Voldemort pushed a bit more magic into his probe and gently touched the bridge again, but a tiny bit more forcefully this time. He made contact and began to see images through his host's eyes. The white owl, once more. The bars on the window.

This would be very delicate. He needed to push for a recent memory to identify the person, but if they knew even the basics of Occlumency they would know someone was in their head. He pressed a compulsion through the link, a wish to find the most important recent memory. That would doubtlessly contain information on this host's identity.

Horrible, splitting pain. A graveyard. _Kill the spare._ Green light, rushing. A handsome, dark-haired boy dead on the muddy ground. A giant cauldron billowing thick white smoke.

Lord Voldemort would have smiled maliciously had he not been so deep into his meditative trance. As it was, he pulled his probe back and cackled madly in the silence of his mind.

 _Harry Potter held a piece of his soul!_ This was both incredibly unfortunate and hysterical at the same time. Unfortunate for Harry Potter, because Lord Voldemort could now find out where he lived and come pay him a pleasant (for Voldemort, at least) summer visit. Hysterical because Lord Voldemort had to execute his greatest feat yet, removing a soul-piece from a living Horcrux _without_ destroying it so that it could be placed within a new vessel.

Harry Potter was _not_ a permissible host for a part of Lord Voldemort's soul. He, Lord Voldemort, **was** going to kill the Potter boy. That was a foregone conclusion, it was going to happen. But he refused to do so whilst a part of his soul was at stake.

At least now his course of action for the immediate future was certain. First, he had to discover Potter's location and any defenses.

Then he had to capture him.

Finally, he had to rip his soul fragment from his body and end his miserable life.

The prophecy could wait. It had for fourteen years, after all.

 **oo0ooOoo0oo**

 _ **2 July 1995  
**_ _Early Morning_

 _A tall, handsome young man with dark hair spun his head left and right, trying to pierce the murk of the old graveyard they seemed to have landed within. He turned back around to the younger, smaller teenager who had come with him who had thumped to the ground, unable to stand on his injured leg. The man offered a hand, which the teenager took._

" _Harry, did you know the Cup was a Portkey?" asked Cedric Diggory._

 _Harry swallowed and looked around nervously as he teetered and tried to balance. "No. No I didn't."_

 _Cedric nodded and a grim expression crossed his face as he looked about at the misty, overgrown graves. "Wands out, d'you reckon?" His own wand suddenly appeared in his hand._

 _Harry merely pulled his wand from his tattered Tri-Wizard Champion robes with a grimy, bloody hand. He looked around again. Still nothing. Shouldn't there be something by now?_

 _The chipped tombstones throughout the graveyard began to fade to white as a sudden, unnaturally thick fog condensed from nothing. Soon, Harry and Cedric stood in a small circle in which they could see only each other and a few nearby graves. A thin, cloaked figure suddenly appeared in the mist._

 _Harry and Cedric both held their wands towards the approaching silhouette, ready to defend if need be. Harry felt a horrible feeling of foreboding building in his chest, and heard a small voice in his head chanting, "Not Cedric, not Cedric..."_

" _ **Kill the spare** ," came the high, cruel voice from the fog. A sickly green bolt of light abruptly burned to his right, through the haze!_

" _NO!" Harry shouted desperately, spinning to track the Killing Curse and falling as his injured leg twisted and buckled again. "NOT CEDRIC!" the voice in his head thundered!_

 _When Harry finished his falling turn, however, Cedric Diggory was not behind him. The tombstones dissolved, and he fell not to long grass and mud, but to hard asphalt, a road. The Killing Curse left a clear trail through the haze and plowed into the front door of a perfectly normal house, the wood splintering and cracking as it was blasted violently from its hinges. High, echoing laughter began to emanate cruelly from behind Harry, from within the fog._

 _The fog cleared slightly, dissipating, but the laughter merely became deafening. On the front of the home, polished and shining in the silvery half-light that penetrated the mist, held up by two perfectly ordinary metal nails hammered into the wall over a rosebush, hung a large metal number four._

 _Harry suddenly felt a jerk behind his navel, yanking him through the shattered front door of Number Four, Privet Drive. The force continued dragging him, his legs bouncing and thudding loudly on each step of the stairs, and he flew at his door, locks locked and bolts bolted, cat flap in the bottom ready for another meal. He bounced off of his door, then was pulled violently again into the door, shattering it with his own body as—_

The sheets, damp and sticky with sweat, slid down to Harry's waist as he shot upright in his bed, breathing hard. His hands jumped up of their own accord to grasp his forehead, trying to ease the splitting, pounding pain that felt like it was splitting his skull.

He sat there, hands trembling slightly from remembered pain as he attempted to make sense of his dream through the foreign emotions he could feel in his head. Voldemort had been feeling extremely happy in the days since his resurrection, and Harry's headache had been more or less constant as a result. Even now, in the middle of the night, the murderous madman seemed to be absolutely ecstatic.

Slowly, the tremors in his hands faded and his headache abated slightly, from splitting to pounding to merely uncomfortable, letting him finally focus on the dream. For some reason, he had dreamed of Privet Drive. In fact, he had dreamed of some kind of attack on Number Four. _Why would I dream about an attack here? There's no chance of that happening._

After a few more minutes pondering his strange nightmares, he finally flopped back on his damp sheets to try and get a few more hours of sleep. It did not come easily, and he tossed and turned restlessly for the rest of the night.

 **oo0oo**

High, cruel laughter echoed within the Riddle House. Within the village, early risers looked about nervously as they darted through the streets. Not one could identify the source of the coldly hair-raising cackle that echoed through the air.

 **oo0oo**

Across the street from Number Four, unknown to all of the inhabitants, was a small circular area of grass. Much like the Riddle House, nobody could look directly at it and any wizards who saw it would not remember it. And inside of this circle, standing unnaturally still in the darkness, stood a rather short figure in layers of tattered, ripped gray robes and an equally battered gray cloak.

This man's hood was pulled up, his face obscured carefully with more than just shadows. Even his hands were gloved, carefully hiding all sight of him apart from his robes from the world. It would not do for his identity to be found out should someone find and break his wards.

Hours later dawn came, the sky pinking with the rising sun. The man had not yet shifted from his position facing Number Four, Privet Drive.

There was a sudden rustle of coarse cloth as the man moved, resting one hand on an oddly-shaped sword hilt sticking out of the left side of his cloak. When he turned to the right suddenly it became clear the hilt was modeled after a lily, flattened carefully to be usable as a grip. The man walked off, shimmering into nothing before he left his warded circle of grass.

The wards remained, awaiting another night's vigil.

 **oo0ooOoo0oo**

 _ **2 July 1995  
** Midnight_

Privet Drive was quiet at night. The only sound that normally broke the heavy silence was the contented buzzing of the sodium vapor streetlamps, and perhaps the odd passing car.

Tonight that was not the case.

 _Crack! Crack!_

The close-spaced echoes of the two sounds, like whips snapping in the air, broke the stillness before dissipating quickly in the oppressive heat.

From behind a tall bush close to a fence appeared two men in heavy black robes and cloaks. Their hoods were up, faces hidden carefully in their depths.

Both men began to strut arrogantly down the street. Coming to such a filthy muggle neighborhood as this was below them, and they knew it. They had even considered, briefly, denying their Lord.

That would have been an incredibly poor decision, had they taken it. Fortunately for them they had not.

The two men made no effort to avoid the hazy yellow discs of light around the streetlamps as they walked. They strolled through without pause, and in so doing revealed their faces within their hoods.

Except there were no faces there. Polished, grinning silver masks in the likenesses of human skulls shined eerily in the dim light, and empty eye sockets glared out at the world with hate in their invisible gaze. The two men stepped back out of the light, and the insides of their hoods regained the deep shadows. The angry stares of the masks disappeared into darkness.

Both men continued down the street for a short period, in and out of the pools thrown off by the streetlamps. They detested having to walk so far, but the Dark Lord had informed them that there were supposedly Blood Wards on the house. Such wards reacted poorly to being breached by most magical forms of transport. In fact, earlier that day they each had been forced to dress as Muggles to view where they wished to Apparate to without being discovered! They both still felt unclean after walking among those unwashed animals for even a short time. They could not, however, come in too close to the home and those wards.

Finally the two cloaked men stopped in front of a totally normal two-story house with a meticulously clean station wagon parked in the drive. They walked closer, and when they were off the road one of them produced a wand and lit the tip with a faint silvery light.

On the front of the home a shiny number four reflected the wandlight.

One man turned to the other, wand still out and lit. "Stand guard Two," he said quietly, voice turned raspy and unrecognizable by spells on the mask. "We don't know if Dumbledore has some of his Order here guarding the boy or not."

Two nodded his head. "Understood. Make sure that the boy does actually live at this filthy place for Master. He would be most wroth should we err in our judgment here." One grunted shortly in agreement, then walked off out of view of the road.

Two melted into the shadows in front of the house, nearly invisible in his black cloak.

One stalked to the back of the home and doused the light of his wand with a quick flick of the tip. He raised it, and swished it smoothly through the air.

" _Homenum Revelio."_

Four ghostly white outlines of people, visible only to One, appeared faintly through the walls of the house, all on the second floor. Two were clustered together in a corner of the floor, a third in the center of the back wall. The fourth outline, the smallest, was in the opposite corner from the third person. The white outlines faded, and One nodded to himself.

He raised his wand to cast again, a much longer incantation this time. Finding human presences was quite easy. Specifying that you only wanted to see a specific presence was far more difficult, but One managed.

The spell came back positive and confirmed that Harry Potter was in the front right corner of Number Four, Privet Drive. One walked to look for a window to the room. While spells were well and good, the Dark Lord had demanded that he check with his own eyes. The spells were to save him time checking houses in case his Lord's information was wrong, not that it ever was.

One stopped on the side of house underneath the closest window to Potter. He cast sticking charms carefully on his hands and feet, then used them to begin to scale the wall so he could look in through the window. He would have much preferred just using a broom, but with so many muggle houses in the area something so obviously magical couldn't be risked, or so the Dark Lord said.

One jerked to an uncomfortable stop as his head thudded into something above him painfully. He froze, stuck to the wall like a bloody Acromantula. Hopefully nobody had heard that. One glanced up at what he had encountered with his head and glared at it, even as his jaw tightened with distaste.

Sticking out from where they were securely bolted to the bricks was a set of iron bars, blocking the window. Nasty muggles, to do this to even a halfblood was a disgrace. One stopped his mental grumbling before it could become too caustic. Blood Wards were said to be able to feel such emotions, and act against them.

One inched to the side of the bars and ascended just far enough to look into the room, scanning it closely.

There! On the rickety bed and tossing restlessly in his sleep. That was unmistakably Harry Potter. One nodded and descended back down the wall, then strolled casually back to the front of the home. He nodded at Two and both struck off back down the street.

Two faint cracks a minute later heralded their departure.

Across the way, once again within his warded circle of grass, stood the figure in gray robes and a cloak. He fingered the hilt of his sword, before disappearing again, fading into nothing totally silently.

And just within view of Number Four Privet Drive, in the home of one Arabella Figg, Mundungus Fletcher shifted uneasily in his sleep, but otherwise remained undisturbed. Nobody but the gray man took notice of One or Two and their stroll down Privet Drive.

 **oo0oo**

Maniacal laughter echoed once more through the streets of Little Hangleton. This was getting out of hand! The residents still could not figure out where exactly these strange noises were coming from. For that matter, why did everyone suddenly have out their heavy weather cloaks? There was no chance of rain. And why were they black?

 **oo0ooOoo0oo**

 _ **3 July 1995  
** Early Morning, Before Dawn_

 _Crack crack crack crack crack crack._

 _Crack!_

The silence of Privet Drive on a hot summer night broke for the second time in two days. The half dozen black cloaked men—Death Eaters—followed obediently behind their tall, skeletally thin Master as he glided down the street, black robes billowing. Tonight was the night that Lord Voldemort would begin his victory!

Voldemort grinned maliciously to himself, red eyes gleaming in the light from the lamps. He had plundered the boy's mind over the last day, finding out everything he could about the protections on the house, not that he knew much. But what he did know was enough. Voldemort shared the boy's blood. Blood Wards would not hinder him.

In fact, the six loyal servants that had accompanied him had not done so to aid him. They had come to slow down any response in case that episode with his and Potter's wands connecting played out again. Should that happen, the brat would not escape this time! Lord Voldemort would take the brat, and he would take back his soul-piece before returning Potter's cold corpse to that fool of a headmaster!

At last, the Dark Lord reached Number 4 Privet Drive. He stood and looked at the house, reveling in the satisfaction he knew he would feel shortly. Then, slowly, savoring the moment so he would remember it as the beginning of his rise, he raised his wand, pointed it at the door.

His smile became unnaturally wide and he crooned a single word. After all, at the moment of victory one must enjoy oneself. Saying spells out loud, while unnecessary, was truly quite satisfying.

" _Reducto."_

 **oo0oo**

 _SKREEEEEEEEEE!_

A delicate little silver device on one of Albus Dumbledore's many bookshelves began to screech its existence to the world, despite it being the middle of the night.

Moments later, Dumbledore blearily rushed into the office from his personal chambers, shoving his half-moon glasses onto his nose. He still wore a bright orange sleeping gown and a pair of fluffy slippers.

Dumbledore searched the shelves for the shrieking monitoring device (as there were several that would make that particular noise). When he finally found it he cursed quietly using several words that would have had Minerva raising her eyebrow at him. He never cursed in her presence. She was very intimidating, even to him.

Dumbledore immediately scrambled back to his chambers, and came out barely thirty seconds later in an ordinary white robe that had only been worn once before and with his wand in his hand. As he sprinted for the door he shot Fawkes' perch (and the tiny baby phoenix sitting upon it in the pile of ash) a regretful look. His shoes clattered down the spiral staircase.

Not even the Headmaster of Hogwarts could Apparate out of the school through the wards, and a young phoenix could not fire travel. His only hope of reaching Harry in time to save him was to run for the gates of Hogwarts with everything he had.

The wards on Privet Drive were failing. There was no time to waste.

 **oo0oo**

Harry Potter's sweat-dampened sheets bunched up at his waist as he shot upright in his bed, clutching his scar and gasping while his head tried to split open.

 _Why does it hurt like this now?_ He asked himself through the agony in his forehead. _The last time it felt like this was in the graveyard!_

Harry glanced at the cracked clock on his nightstand (Dudley had hurled it across the room when the alarm went off one morning) and sighed at the early time, resigning himself to not sleeping for the rest of the night. He could barely think through this headache! How could he sleep with it?

 _BOOOOM!_

He jumped violently at the sudden explosion that shook the house and scrambled out of bed. _What was that!_

Harry rushed to his window, looking out at the street on an angle in an effort at finding out what was going on. What had made such a loud sound? He looked for a short moment before he suddenly grabbed his wand and glasses, fumbling in the dark. That was the source of the sound. Death Eaters!

 _Dumbledore said I was safe here! Why are there Death Eaters outside of the Dursley's house? For that matter, how did they even find this place?_

No answer would be forthcoming though, he knew. He was on his own, like he always was. And this time, he had no way to escape. He hurriedly jammed his glasses onto his face.

Harry looked around before his eyes settled on Hedwig in her cage. He quickly opened it, leaving the door ajar. He locked his green gaze with her own yellow one.

"Hedwig, I need you to get out of here. I can use magic to save myself, but if the Death Eaters outside get into the house you cannot. Go to a safe place, I'll call you when this is over. Go!" He urged her, opening his window. Hedwig stared at him. Then she obediently took wing, squeezing through the bars over his window and flying into the night. For some reason no curses flew at her from the Death Eaters around the house.

Harry suddenly heard Uncle Vernon's heavy, thudding footsteps rush past his locked, chained and dead-bolted door. He ignored his Uncle's shouting at what he assumed were the ruins of the front door and readied his wand. If some Death Eater wanted to kill him, he would make them work for it, as hard as he could.

Cold, sickly green light flashed under his door and he heard something like a heavy weight falling to the floor. Bile rose in his throat as he remembered the exact same shade of green killing Cedric Diggory in an instant. His wand remained aimed at his door.

Suddenly a high, cold laugh echoed up the staircase and Harry's blood froze. He knew that laugh. _He knew that laugh._

Voldemort was _here!_ But Dumbledore had told him that the Blood Wards—oh. Voldemort used his blood to build his new body. Of course the Blood wards wouldn't stop him still, that would be entirely too much good luck for Harry sodding Potter! Clearly, Privet Drive had no true defenses, not after the Third Task.

Harry's only defense this summer had been obscurity, which he clearly no longer could claim considering the Dark Lord walking up the stairs and his dead uncle.

Well, if Voldemort was in the house he was going to die. He'd barely lived through the graveyard, and now here he was in his nightclothes in a room he couldn't get out of. Just then his scar reminded him of its presence with a fresh spike of pain trying to split his skull. He grunted and clutched his forehead again in a futile effort to relieve it. His wand remained pointed firmly at his locked door, despite the tremor in his hand.

The horrible laughing finally stopped— _how long did he just laugh? That had to be thirty seconds_ —and Harry readied himself for a fight he would almost certainly lose horribly. His scar burned again.

 _Snap!_

One of the locks snapped open loudly and Harry flinched. Of course Voldemort would want to play with him, he couldn't escape! He would probably open the locks and door as slowly as possible to draw this out for as long as he could. Harry remembered Voldemort doing the exact same thing in the graveyard. Torture him for a bit, then stop, laugh and repeat the torture.

 _Clack! Snap-clack! Snick!_

The locks on Harry's door continued opening themselves loudly one by one, and Harry briefly considered trying to blast the bars off of his window to get out. That thought was promptly cut off by the sound of a duel from outside. _The Death Eaters outside! They must be here to keep me in and any help out. I'm well and truly trapped._

Finally, the knob of his door started turning, excruciatingly slowly. It clicked, and the door started to creak open.

Before the barrier was even out of his way, before he could even see into the hall beyond, Harry cast in the hopes of catching Voldemort by surprise. It had worked in the graveyard, it might just work here too!

" _Expelliarmus!"_ Harry shouted, slashing his wand wand in the air. A bright, scarlet burst of light launched at the opening door. Lord Voldemort was not one to be surprised by the same thing twice however. His pale, thin hand shot from the shadows of the hall like lightning and casually just batted the Disarming charm into the wall without even using his wand.

Harry's scar split open and blood dripped into his eyes, and the pain grew even worse than it had been before. Befuddled by the pain, Harry cast again desperately. Lord Voldemort swatted it aside with his hand just as negligently as he had earlier. He started cackling, a mirthless, cruel sound and then he stepped through the open door.

Harry went to shout another spell, but a curse flew through the open window, somehow missing all of the bars, and exploded against the wall in a cloud of plaster dust. Voldemort took advantage of his moment as Harry shied away from the detonation. His brown yew wand struck faster than a viper.

" _Crucio!"_

The spell smashed into Harry before he could even think to dodge it, and his world dissolved into pain.

 **oo0oo**

Albus Dumbledore appeared with an enormous crack (louder than he normally was in his haste) at the end of Privet Drive and began to sprint for Number Four. He took long strides, white robes flapping in the humid air, hair streaming behind him, and moved far, far faster than a man of one hundred and fourteen had any right to. The Elder Wand appeared in his hand.

Dumbledore did not slow down in the slightest when the half-dozen Death Eaters came into view. His wand shot up, and the earth itself rose up in a stony wall to block the curses the Death Eaters hurled at him. The wall broke as more curses impacted it, but Dumbledore just jumped through the cloud of rocky shrapnel, a glimmering silver shield around him, protecting him from the shards of stone. His wand kept moving, singing through space and calling anything and everything to his aid. The rubble behind him shook and rapidly pulled itself together into a wolf that launched itself at one Death Eater with the grinding sound of rock on rock. The rosebushes in front of Number Four lashed out, grabbing another Death Eater and pulling him into their thorny embrace, binding him securely so he couldn't move, couldn't cast to free himself.

Faster than the four remaining Death Eaters could even react to their losses Dumbledore was amongst them, wand still striking. The stone wolf finished knocking its first target unconscious and leapt at a second, only to be blasted to pieces. Those pieces turned to water in midair and became a serpent that struck at the Death Eater who had cast the curse, before suddenly shifting into heavy iron chains that dragged him to the ground. The black robes of one Death Eater animated, wrapping around his throat and choking him to unconsciousness.

The last two Death Eaters tried to step back, to get more space between them and the force of nature known as Albus Dumbledore, only to fall into a pit that appeared instantly in the ground behind them. The pit disappeared and suddenly the two Death Eaters were encased firmly in stone up to their necks, immobilized and trapped. Dumbledore just rushed past, robes torn by a few stray cutting curses and covered in gray stone dust but otherwise completely unharmed by the six-on-one duel. A scream cut through the air from the house.

Dumbledore dashed through the hole where the front door had been and took the stairs three at a time, breathing finally becoming labored. He reached the landing, jumped Vernon Dursley's incredibly overweight corpse, and barged into Harry's open room, only to stop cold.

Tom Riddle held Harry Potter in front of him with a vicious, unnaturally wide smile on his face, wand to Harry's neck. Before Dumbledore could even try to think of a way to save Harry, a way to save the chosen one, Tom twisted on his heel. The apparition wards on the house shattered with an enormous wet ripping sound and suddenly, both Harry and Tom were gone.

Outside somebody shouted _"Morsmordre!"_ and Dumbledore glanced out the window to see that the Death Eater he had imprisoned in chains had somehow gotten out, freed his companions, and cast the Dark Mark over Number Four, Privet Drive. The six Death Eaters disappeared en masse, probably with blood-bound Portkeys. If Tom could enter this house the Blood wards almost certainly didn't do anything to stop him making such things.

Albus Dumbledore dropped his head in defeat, and saw Harry's glasses, cracked by some spell, laying on the floor at his feet. He knelt down and picked them up, pocketing them, before he glanced sadly at Vernon Dursley's corpse at the top of the stairs. If Vernon was dead, Petunia and Dudley were almost certainly gone to the next life too.

He turned and left the empty room, sadly trudging down the stairs and out of the house to wait in the front yard. Aurors and Obliviators would be needed, and the Dark Mark needed dispelling. He had many questions to answer.

 **oo0oo**

Across the street, watching the Dark Mark glow ominously overhead, stood the man in gray robes in his warded circle of grass. At his feet, sleeping and totally lost to the world, lay Petunia and Dudley Dursley. He briefly ruminated on being unable to save Vernon, not that he had really wished to anyways, before shaking his hooded head. Death would take those he wished, and it was Vernon's time.

The man in gray gently knelt down and touched the two sleeping forms in front of him, and all three faded into nothing. The wards and charms on the warded circle of grass would decay over the next day, more than enough time for the Aurors now appearing to have departed. He had to tell Petunia and Dudley that Vernon was dead now. That would doubtlessly be loud and messy, and more than a little bit unfortunate. Maybe a calming draught would work on muggles.

 **oo0oo**

The man in gray robes appeared outside of Gringotts without either Petunia or Dudley. He strode in casually and walked to an open teller. Even at this time of night, Gringotts remained open. Profit can be had at any time of day, after all.

The man stopped before the counter and looked up at the goblin, who glared down at him. Hoods were frowned upon in Gringotts, but not actually against any goblin law.

"Good morning, Master Teller," the man spoke, his voice metallic and ringing, clearly some kind of disguising artifact, "I have business to be done with Account Manager Snarlfang. Please inform him that Revenant has arrived."

The teller nodded and disappeared behind the high counter. A minute later, he reappeared. "Follow Ironclaw, Mister Revenant. He will bring you to Account Manager Snarlfang," the goblin growled. Another goblin appeared at the end of the counter and nodded at Revenant.

Revenant nodded his head at the Teller. "May your scales overflow, Master Teller." He strode up to Ironclaw, before both of them disappeared into the halls of Gringotts.

 **oo0ooOoo0oo**

 **Authors Note the Second: I do hope you at least enjoyed the prologue. Anyways! More is coming, hopefully reasonably soonish, and things will begin to develop.**

 **For those of you wondering at the two different kinds of section break I seem to use, the long one (oo0ooOoo0oo) is for scene breaks which generally involve sizable timeskips. They will usually be accompanied by a date. The short one (oo0oo) is for perspective changes and short time jumps within the same scene. They will generally be all on their lonesome.**

 **This update was posted 4/7/2019. I will have a date at the bottom of each update to keep track of my general rate of update.**

 **Cheers all. Erebus out.**


	2. FIgure in Gray: Chapter 1

**Figure in Gray**

Erebus1999

 **Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Harry Potter and all associated properties belong to J.K. Rowling and whoever else she's sold the rights to recently.**

 **oo0ooOoo0oo**

 **Chapter One**

 _ **3 July 1995**  
Before Dawn_

The vaulted stone entrance hall of the old Riddle House lay quiet and dark, patches of unidentifiable variegated fuzz growing peacefully on the damp walls. From the high ceiling dangled a single tarnished chandelier with blackened stumps of candles in the holders, unused and forgotten. It had been so since electric lights were installed on the walls during the 1920s. Dilapidated shutters closed over the filthy windows at both ends, and all of the peeling wooden doors dotting the sides were firmly closed.

On either side of the two enormous main doors sat a pair of black cloaked Death Eaters, dozing peacefully on guard duty in their creaky wooden chairs. Inside of the Riddle House entry hall was the easy shift. None of the surviving Inner Circle ever checked in here, so one could sleep through one's shift in relative comfort.

 _Cruuunch._

The corroded iron latch on the inside of the doors jerked and ground slowly open, flakes of rust floating lazily to the wooden floor. The long-dormant candles in the chandelier suddenly flickered to life and lit the entry hall with a dim, hazy orange glow. One of the sleeping guards stirred and mumbled in his sleep, but didn't wake up. The chair he sat in groaned ominously. The latch snapped open.

 _BOOM!_

The heavy wooden doors suddenly slammed open against their stops, pushed by the impact of a slim body which rolled and skidded across the dirty wooden floor. The two sleeping Death Eaters jumped violently and their rickety chairs collapsed under the sudden strain. They shouted in alarm and fell to the floor in two confused heaps of black robes. The slim body rolled to a stop.

Harry Potter rolled off of his blood-covered face and tried to sit up, but gasped when his right arm (broken by the impact with the doors) buckled underneath his weight. He cradled his arm close to his stomach and struggled to a sitting position on the floor, facing the now-swinging doors. Voldemort seemed like he wanted to play with him for now, but he would _not_ suffer on his back. He would bloody well _stand up_ while Voldemort tortured him!

After a short pause to brace himself against the pain, Harry grunted, staggered to his feet and stood on trembling legs facing the open doors. His scar, which had yet to stop bleeding after splitting open in his bedroom, was dripping blood into his eyes. Absentmindedly he wiped it off with his left sleeve and squinted around the room. He'd lost his glasses after that first Cruciatus curse in his bedroom; all he could see now was a fuzzy muddle of different colored blurs.

Slow, mocking claps and footsteps echoed into the room and Harry squinted harder, hoping to see more clearly. The six dark blurs stopped in a semicircle behind who Harry knew to be Voldemort, and the applause finally stopped. He could hear two voices quietly cursing and old wood creaking in the background.

"Thank you, young Harry," came Voldemort's high pitched, cruel voice, "for being so kind as to open the doors for us." The Dark Lord paused for a few long seconds. His voice, when it returned, was derisive, insulting. "Now _boy_ , open the next set, if you would."

The double doors to Harry's right clicked loudly. He flinched and tensed, bracing himself. It did no good, and he was violently catapulted off of his feet and launched through the doors, which crashed loudly open against the walls much like the main entry doors had seconds before. Harry hit the splintered wooden flooring and screamed as his arm twisted underneath him. He stopped sliding when his head hit something. Everything turned black.

 **oo0oo**

Harry woke up in pain. He was face down on the floor—why did he always seem to land on his face around Voldemort?—with his arm sticking out at an odd angle from him, burning and prickling insistently. His scar seemed quite content to prickle along with it. He could see a set of black slippers just in front of his eyes, discernible due only to their closeness. Harry missed his glasses already; without them he really was quite blind.

"Get up boy. I know quite well that you are awake. _I can feel it_ ," Voldemort's voice had changed from its earlier insulting tone to a soft, hissing croon that raised the hair on Harry's neck. Harry rolled over, groaning softly as his arm jostled with the movement, and struggled back to his feet yet again. Once he had levered himself back upright, Harry straightened his back as much as he could and defiantly stared Voldemort in the face.

' _I would stare you in the eye_ ,' Harry told Voldemort in his head. ' _But I can't see your eyes so your face will have to do.'_ Voldemort merely looked back at Harry, totally relaxed on his throne. Behind himself Harry heard footsteps, but did not turn from his staring match with the Dark Lord.

Voldemort indulged Harry for a few seconds, before he suddenly stood up and spread his thin arms wide, robes falling back to his pale elbows. "Wormtail!" he called. Despite still speaking quietly, his high voice seemed to penetrate every crack of the room and reverberate through the air. Harry looked around at the blurry room, squinting his eyes again. ' _Is this a throne room or something?'_ Harry asked himself, barely making out the columns set close to the walls between the windows.

A rapid shuffling came from the shadows, and Peter Pettigrew crept up next to the throne, eyeing Nagini suspiciously where she lay coiled on the other side. He stopped and nervously looked at his master's feet, dry-washing his hands, one silver then one flesh, around and around each other. Harry focused on the noise and stared at him, a hunched blur next to Voldemort.

"My lord?" Pettigrew's voice shook and cracked, and his shoulders hunched under Voldemort's red gaze. His pudgy cheeks quivered.

"Your arm, Wormtail."

"Yes Master." Pettigrew reluctantly tugged up his left sleeve with shaking hands and held his arm out to Voldemort. Voldemort pulled out a wand with a flourish from his robes, pale and nearly white in color. He grabbed Pettigrew's forearm in a vise-like grip and firmly pressed the tip of the wand to the Dark Mark. Pettigrew screamed, and the Mark writhed and turned jet black on his skin.

"How right this is," Voldemort murmured to himself, still pressing the wand to Pettigrew's arm and ignoring his efforts to twist away, "to call my faithful servants here to witness my victory using the Boy-Who-Lived's very... own... _wand_." Harry glared back at Voldemort.

After nearly a minute, masked and cloaked men and women began to trickle in through the doors and kneel on the floor in a semicircle around the throne, joining those few already there. Pettigrew's screams turned to strangled gasps until finally, Voldemort removed the wand and released his arm, leaving him to fall to the floor in a heap of quivering flesh. Voldemort stood in front of Harry and stared out at his kneeling Death Eaters, red eyes glowing with victory. Harry stared at the blurry lump on the floor, crowing inside with some satisfaction at Pettigrew's pain. ' _The traitor,'_ he observed, ' _is getting his due.'_

"My loyal servants," Voldemort began grandly, arms wide again, "I have called you here tonight to witness the beginning of my great crusade against those who would lead our world into darkness. The mudblood menace will begin its fall this evening, with the capture of the Boy-Who-Lived!" Here he gestured extravagantly to Harry where he stood behind him and paused. The Death Eaters assembled in front of him suddenly seemed to realize there was a person behind their Lord. Their cheers as they confirmed that it was Harry Potter echoed hollowly in the room, and the cheers faded slowly into hollow echoes.

Voldemort waited just a second too long, so the silence in the room after the cheers faded became awkward, and then continued, his voice rising in volume. He took a grand step forward, arms still wide.

"We will continue to build our strength in secret, recruiting from amongst the Ministry, from the giants, the vampires, the werewolves, all those who are oppressed and seek equality, and they shall be the fodder that falls as weeds before the scythe. When all of those who are unworthy have decimated themselves fighting each other, we the purebloods, those of proper breeding and parentage, shall reveal ourselves and ascend to our rightful place in society! We shall rule Britain, and the muggles and mudbloods and blood traitors shall quail before our power!"

The Death Eaters cheered from their kneeling positions on the floor, but were cut off as Voldemort's high pitched voice cut through their exclamations like a blade through thin fabric. Harry was busy trying to determine exactly what Voldemort was talking about. His grand speech so far seemed to make very little sense, at least to Harry. It was like Voldemort wanted to feed his followers his goals fast enough that they never realized how little sense they made.

"Now that the Light's champion, the Boy-Who-Lived is in our hands, we can begin to move forwards in our plans to dominate the Magical World. But first, we have to properly prepare young Harry here," Voldemort again flourished a hand back at Harry quickly, "to be returned to the Leaders of the Light when we announce our glorious presence at last!"

Voldemort took yet another grand step forward into the semicircle of kneeling Death Eaters and spoke again, louder than before. "You see, I am presenting Harry Potter with a great honor, a service to be made to us, the true rulers of Britain! Harry Potter will have the opportunity to serve as part of our celebrations for the festival of Lughnasadh, where we will worship at the great stone circle in Wiltshire, as our ancestors did before us!"

"But, while I prepare the special ritual to be done at that site, we must hold young Harry here firmly in our grasp. Now, I understand you all wish to serve me to the fullest," he paused, red eyes glowing in anticipation, "but I do not expect you to serve me without _proper_ _gratification_." Harry shivered at Voldemort's gleeful, malicious tone; he sounded completely unhinged. The hair on his neck raised again.

"For the next several weeks, as I research and prepare the special ritual to be executed on Lughnasadh, I give you Harry Potter, to entertain yourselves! All I require of him on the first of August is that he be alive, sane, and that his face be untouched. When the festival has passed and we have celebrated the first harvest of the new age, we shall deposit young Harry's corpse in the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic, a worthy announcement of my glorious return to the world to lead us all!" The Death Eaters cheered. Harry felt his stomach drop, and tried to pull himself together enough to try something, _anything_ , to get out of here.

"It is most worthy that I, who cannot die, who has conquered Death, be announced by the demise of the one the Ministry holds most dear. Britain shall bow to Lord Voldemort!"

Harry's legs were barely holding his weight. He could not run, and he could not escape, not like this. All he could do was look worried as the Death Eaters cheered the loudest when they were informed they had a new person to play with. All the better that it was one they all knew of.

 **oo0ooOoo0oo**

 _ **3 July 1995**  
Evening_

As Albus Dumbledore trudged into the kitchen of Number 12 Grimmauld Place, the many conversations over the reason for the emergency meeting stuttered and died to leave an echoing silence. This may have been due to his attire, as none present had ever seen him wearing something so simple as solid white robes before, or possibly the condition of his attire, as it was torn, dusty, and stained with various unknown substances. It may have been because his face, normally cheerful and grandfatherly, could have been carved from stone for all the emotion it displayed.

It could have been because his blue eyes, normally gentle, could currently have been chips of sapphire, hard and glinting in the gaslight.

Dumbledore finally reached the end of the battered wooden table and the armchair waiting for him there. He collapsed into it and gave a long sigh, before he wearily looked up the curious and concerned faces of the Order of the Phoenix. He softly placed his wand on the table and clasped his hands next to it, even as his shoulders slumped. A dozen pairs of eyes watched him as he seemed to melt into his chair, before he subtly straightened up and leaned forwards over his hands.

"Doubtlessly you are all wondering why an emergency meeting of the Order has been called this late in the evening." Dumbledore spoke slowly, and sounded older than any of them had ever heard him sound. "I have called this meeting because a horrible catastrophe has befallen us. It will break in the news tomorrow morning, as I just managed to prevent the printing of an evening edition of the _Daily Prophet,_ to allow both us and the Ministry time to prepare for the fallout."

Dumbledore paused for a moment to let the gravity of the situation become clear to everyone in the room, but Alastor stumped forward from where he stood against the wall (never in a chair, that left his back open to be attacked) and cut the silence off before it became uncomfortable.

"Get to the point Albus!" Moody demanded, "What happened?"

Dumbledore let out another sigh even as Sirius and Remus mumbled their agreement with Moody from their spots at the table.

"Before dawn this morning," he began, "Lord Voldemort appeared in Little Whinging with six of his Death Eaters and attacked Privet Drive. I did not arrive in time to stop him, as Fawkes recently had a burning day and I had to run from my office to get outside of Hogwart's wards to Apparate there. Harry Potter has been captured by Voldemort."

Time seemed to stop in the room for a second, then two, as everybody present absorbed that statement while Dumbledore waited for the inevitable reaction to his words. That reaction did not take long, and the people around the table exploded into exclamations of horror and shouts asking "Where is he now?" in various different ways.

Dumbledore sat tiredly at the end of the table and waited for the shouts to die down. Finally, once the kitchen was again silent and all eyes were on him, he spoke again. "We shall all have to put forth our best efforts to find Harry, or he may very well be lost to us," he said.

"Severus," the man in question glared at Dumbledore from his seat, but otherwise didn't say anything. "I would like for you to attempt to ascertain where Voldemort is holding Harry. I trust that you can at least find us a clue to his whereabouts, even if you can't tell us the exact location." Snape jerked a nod, greasy hair falling in front of his face. He brushed it back irritably with one hand.

Before Dumbledore could issue further orders, Sirius Black exploded from his chair shouting, "I can't believe you would trust _Snivellus_ to—"

"Calm yourself Mutt!" Snape barked frigidly, cutting Sirius off mid-sentence. Sirius went to turn on him but Remus grabbed his arm and pulled him back into his seat. Snape kept speaking over Sirius's continued grumblings. "I will do everything within my power to find the brat. However, the Dark Lord does not trust me yet and will likely only call me if Potter is somehow injured while imprisoned, assuming of course that the Dark Lord _wants_ to keep the boy alive."

Molly Weasley stood up and quickly left the room, eyes suspiciously bright and mumbling to herself. Dumbledore looked searchingly at Snape, then nodded slightly. "I know you will give this search your best effort Severus." Despite Severus's dislike for Harry, Dumbledore knew he would do anything to find Lily's child safe.

Sirius opened his mouth, presumably to insult Snape more, but Remus flicked his wand and conjured a bright purple ball that he promptly shoved into Sirius's mouth with one hand. Sirius screamed incoherently, unable to speak, then reached up and fished the ball out with his fingers. Before he could try to deride Snape even further, the man had stood from his chair and stormed through the door in a billow of black robes. The door slammed shut behind him.

Sirius made to chuck the ball at Remus, only for the Conjuration to dissipate in a puff of green smoke just before it hit him. Remus grinned at the frustrated look on Sirius's face, and turned to look at Dumbledore again. Sirius grumbled to himself about 'backstabbing friends' and 'just a bit of fun.'

"Since we are already here," Dumbledore broke the silence, "I may as well move to the next problem we have." He looked at Moody where he was back leaning against the wall. "Alastor, I am still in nee—"

"No Albus!" Moody growled over Dumbledore before he could even finish asking him to take the DADA job again. "You know as well as I do that the Minister is set on getting a Ministry employee into Hogwarts, and I'm not a Ministry employee, not anymore. I have other obligations anyways." Moody's eye spun around and looked through the wall with the owl window in it.

Dumbledore had been expecting that response and truly knew already that the Minister would have blocked any attempt to hire someone outside of the Ministry of Magic anyways, and simply nodded his agreement with Alastor's argument. It had been worth the try at least. Dumbledore was running out of leads to run down for a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. The person would have to have unassailable qualifications to be accepted by the Minister. He could not do anything for that. Dumbledore pushed the problem to the back of his mind.

He thought for a moment about the current situation. With Harry gone, not only would the Order have to search for him, any friends he had would also have to be informed so as not to be too surprised when the article came out in the _Daily Prophet_. Perhaps Minerva would be best to inform Ms. Granger and Mr. Weasley of Harry's capture by Voldemort.

"Minerva, would you be so kind as to go and tell Ms. Granger and Mr. Weasley what has occurred? It would be best if they were simply informed now rather than informed by the _Daily Prophet_." McGonagall nodded stiffly and left the room.

Dumbledore watched the door close softly. "I do believe," he said quietly, "that we have done all that we can do. This meeting of the Order of the Phoenix is at an end. Alastor, Nymphadora, Kingsley, stay behind if you would. I have a few requests I must make of you." Tonks twitched but didn't say anything.

The people in the room filed out leaving just Moody, Tonks and Kingsley with Dumbledore.

"Alastor, would you check with your contacts for any sign of Harry? Perhaps a Death Eater will have a bit too much to drink and his lips will loosen some. If we're fortunate, a location may even be revealed to us," said Dumbledore. Moody grunted his agreement and stumped out of the room before Dumbledore could say anything else. The door slammed shut and a plate fell out of one of the open-face cabinets, bouncing off the stone floor but not breaking, presumably due to some enchantment or other.

Tonks and Kingsley traded glances, then looked back at Dumbledore questioningly and waited for him to tell them what he wanted.

"Kingsley, Ms. Tonks, if the Auror department finds any information on Harry's whereabouts I need to know. Please keep an eye out and send any information to me." The two nodded and left, leaving Dumbledore alone in his white robes, pondering how he could save the effort against Voldemort.

If Harry could not be saved, perhaps the Prophecy may yet apply to the Longbottom heir...

 **oo0ooOoo0oo**

 _ **4 July 1995  
** Early Morning_

Lord Voldemort frowned and looked at the pale wand in his hand as he left Harry Potter's cell. He had been using the boy's wand for the last several hours to show those who served him his strength. After all, if the Boy-Who-Lived's wand even worked for him, who could stop his power? Now, though, he did not believe it prudent to continue using it. While it was a great achievement to force a wand to work against its owner, some wands could fight back better than others, and Potter's wand was one of those.

Every time he used it, cursed the boy with it, he felt it resist his will before finally it caved to his power. Even now, after hours of torturing its master it held out, withstanding his greatness despite the futility of the act. Voldemort greatly enjoyed humiliating Potter before his Death Eaters by using his own wand against him, but the wand just didn't _feel_ right even if it did work nearly as well as his own yew wand.

This wand, he felt, would betray him when he most needed it if he were to try and use it as his own in combat, or any other time really. It would be much better to remove it entirely, deprive Potter of a great weapon were he to ever break out somehow. A duel like what happened in the graveyard could _not_ happen again. Lord Voldemort had to be _invincible_ before his servants, or they would lose their respect for him.

Voldemort took the pale, nearly white stick of wood in both of his long, thin hands and _bent._ The wand curved, and creaked quietly, and popped with the strain.

But it did not break.

Voldemort released the pressure and watched in wonder as the wand, formerly bent at nearly a ninety degree angle, sprung back straight as though nothing had ever happened. He scowled at that, glaring at the unmarked holly wood.

 _How dare this piece of wood with a bird feather defy me? I am the greatest wizard of all time, and if I decide a wand will be broken, it shall_ **break.**

He changed his grip on the wand, pushed again, and again the wood bent to an absurd degree, protesting the strain with pops and creaks but refusing to fail its captured master.

Voldemort scowled and twisted the wood, pushing it harder. This sliver of wood _would not defy him!_

With a splintering crack that echoed in the silence of the corridor, Harry Potter's holly wand snapped in two. Voldemort pulled the pieces apart to place them in different pockets of his robes, but the two broken shards would not pull apart!

He glared down at the broken length of holly again, and his red eyes widened in surprise.

Despite being bent, and twisted, and violently ripped asunder, the core of the wand lived on. A thin thread of red, a phoenix feather, clung stubbornly to life. A core, if intact, could with difficulty be extracted from a damaged shell and placed into a new wand body, thus returning to its master to serve them once more. This bird feather, in its _arrogance_ , fought the greatest wizard alive to return to Potter.

Nothing fought him for long. Voldemort gave a sharp, violent wrench and the phoenix feather finally gave up, failing with a quiet snap.

Harry Potter's faithful wand, companion of four years and many adventures, was no more.

 **oo0oo**

In a tiny stone cell beneath the Riddle House, a bleeding, tortured Harry Potter whimpered in his fitful sleep. He felt, unconsciously, as though a part of himself had just died.

 **oo0oo0ooOoo**

 _ **4 July 1995**  
Dawn_

Deep within a hidden valley in Scotland stood a great forest, filled with trees tall and proud and hiding many secrets within their stately trunks. However, trees were not the only things within the valley, nor the most secret. Near one of the few passes through the surrounding mountains into the depression, unused but still plausible, a rocky tor erupted from the ground to protrude high above the dense forest.

And on this outcropping stood a tall watchtower, forever eyeing the mountain pass through which those who meant the residents of the valley harm could potentially come.

This watchtower was formerly of Roman construction, but had been expanded centuries ago to an incredible height, supported by magic to claw at the sky with its sloped roof. Of course, this was centuries ago, and now that magic had aged and failed.

Instead of a proud tower ready to warn of an invasion, a weathered, jagged stump stood on the hill, the rising sun shining through the gaps in the crumbling masonry like the remnants of some monstrous skeleton, the final legacy of an incredible creature long since passed on from this earth. Even as a ruin much of the tower's lower floors remained stable and usable, and the broken walls still rose high above the trees from their elevated foundations on the hill. Some of the magic that had built it, so far deteriorated, still remained, still fought on against the ravages of age and thousands of storms. Perhaps a few more decades and the structure would have collapsed entirely and become merely rubble at the hill's summit, forever hidden by the wards hiding it from prying eyes.

This fate would not come to pass, not for this place.

For the first time in nearly a millennia the weathered arrowslits glowed with torchlight, and the failing wards and charms found themselves renewed to last another thousand years.

Within the ground floor, the most intact and most livable part of the tower, were three people. Two were quite unconscious, although they would not be so for too much longer. Even conscious they would likely not appreciate their surroundings overly much. The last person, however, was quite at home. He had been here before, long long ago. He had been in the area recently, but had not stopped in at this tower in particular.

Revenant finished starting a fire in the centuries-cold pit in the center of the square room and began replacing the dim torches that had been left in the brackets on the walls with newer, brighter ones. He had brought the two still-living Dursleys here because it was, above all else, _safe._ The greatest security was found through obscurity after all, and he was the only soul on this Earth that still knew of this place's existence, let alone the ward key. His decision had been cemented by his need to take care of some business in the valley anyways. Taking of care of two tasks with one spell was always a good thing.

Revenant shoved the last new torch into its bracket and tossed the old into the fire. He glided across the room and stood over the still forms of Petunia and Dudley Dursley where they slept on a pair of folding wooden cots. They looked so peaceful, and he hated to have to wake them up to their horrible situation, but it had to be done. Revenant reached into his cloak with his left hand, popped the cap on a slim leather tube hooked into his belt, and removed a wand that was grayed and grooved with age, despite being well cared for.

The two remaining Dursleys would have to discuss their course of action for the future after they were informed of their circumstances. Revenant had things to do in this area anyways, and would just leave them in the tower with some food to eat while he did them. He'd be gone for several hours so when he returned hopefully they'd have at least the start of a plan.

He tugged his hood forwards to ensure it covered his face completely in its shadow and flicked his wand twice, once each at the two sleeping Dursleys. A spark of white light shot out of the stick of wood and entered the two sleepers. Petunia awakened instantly and opened her eyes, only to begin screaming just as quickly. Her shrieks woke Dudley all the way up and he shouted in fright and scrambled backwards, upending his wooden cot with a loud thump as his bulk impacted with the floor. The cot followed him down with a loud rattle.

Petunia sat up on her own cot and continued to scream. And scream. And scream.

Finally, Revenant tired of waiting for her to stop and flicked his wand again to silence her and stop the noise. Afterwards he momentarily questioned why they seemed so afraid before he remembered his own appearance and took a brief guess as to what he appeared as to the two Muggles. A shortish figure in a stained and ragged cloak and matching robes with the hood up, face hidden in shadow and wand in hand pointed right at the two. Small wonder they'd lost it, Revenant would have found himself uncomfortable in such a situation too. Short people always seemed more threatening when you couldn't see their face.

" _Pax_ ," he hesitated, "Mrs. Dursley." His metallic voice echoed into the quiet of the room from his hood. "I have no ill intent to yourself or," he paused again, "your son." While speaking he made absolutely no movements, and in fact stood unnaturally still. The hood of his robe did not twitch with the movements of his unseen jaw.

Petunia stopped her silent screeching and stared dumbly at him, before swallowing and pointing to her throat tentatively. Revenant stared back at her for a moment, ignoring Dudley who was leaning back on his fat arms on the floor working his jaw and looking wide-eyed at the short man before him.

"Are you done shouting, Mrs. Dursley?" he asked quietly. Petunia nodded, still pointing at her throat. "Very well. I feel that I should warn you that my familiar does not care for such loud noises. Despite not having ears she hears quite well." A large triangular head suddenly stuck out from inside of the hood, a sizable serpent of some kind. Her jaws spread wide in a mockery of a yawn, displaying a forest of needle-like, backwards pointing teeth in addition to the two large fangs in the upper jaw that _snicked_ down, before she closed her mouth and withdrew back into the darkness of the hood. Petunia paled slightly, but continued pointing at her throat.

 _She has more spine than I initially thought_ , he thought to himself. _Perhaps we can try again?_

Revenant twitched his wand and then fluidly pushed it back into its leather tube within his robes. Petunia cleared her throat, as if to see if she really could make sound again. Revenant cut in before she could say anything. "I request that you ask your questions one at a time, Mrs. Dursley. After this however, I have other tasks that must be done today and will have to depart you for a time. If you would, come up with a plan of action to return to society, and explain it to me when I have returned. There will be food served shortly by a house elf, of which I have a few. Do not be alarmed at their appearance. They will not harm you or your son if you do not attempt to harm them."

Petunia nodded, still rather pale from the snake inside of his hood. "Wh-where are we?" she started hesitantly. Her hand darted up to nudge some hair away from her face.

"We are currently within the bottom floor of what remains of the great watchtower on the Serpent's Tor, in northern Scotland."

Petunia's eyes widened in surprise, before a frown flickered on her face to be replaced by a sort of resigned acceptance. Her mouth opened, and the next questions came, and Revenant answered them all as calmly as he had the first. Nearly an hour passed, and the sun rose before finally, Revenant called the interrogation to a close. He did have other things to do than answer Petunia's many, many questions. Now, however she was aware that Vernon had not survived the attack on Number Four, Harry was captured by Death Eaters (her asking about her nephew actually surprised Revenant, he had not expected such concern for someone she disliked so much) and that Number Four, while damaged, was still standing and livable with some repairs. The Ministry's Obliviator's, Revenant said, had probably repaired the damage already in fact. The house might be closed up as a crime scene for some time though as a kidnapping and murder _did_ happen there.

When Petunia asked Revenant why he had not taken Vernon from the house too, he had merely shaken his head and whispered, "The circle _had to be closed..._ "

Petunia looked at Revenant oddly after he said that, but he ignored her questioning look and turned around to walk out of the heavy wood plank door on one wall, cloak billowing out as he went. Petunia shot up suddenly, face scrunched up in worry. "Where are you going?" she asked.

"Out. I informed you earlier that I had other things to do today than just answer your questions, and I intend to do those things now. I will return later this afternoon. Use that time to bring your son out of his catatonic state and plan for your future and his." Petunia spun around to see Dudley still leaning back on his pudgy arms on the floor, mouth open and eyes wide. There was a bit of drool on his shirt.

By the time Petunia had wheeled back to the door, Revenant had gone out through the door and snapped it shut firmly behind him. Petunia was locked in for the day now. Dudley continued drooling.

 **oo0oo**

Revenant left the Serpent's Tor behind (it had been named such because the snakes within the area liked to sun themselves in the sun that hit the rock where it stuck up above the trees) and moved into what now was called the Forbidden Forest. He knew that the sun was well up now, even if it couldn't be easily seen through the thick foliage above. Time was short, and he would need to move quickly. He _could not be seen._

His stride quickened and soon he was loping through the Forest faster than most horses could run. Revenant wanted to use one of the many secret tunnels into Hogwarts castle. The circle was finally beginning to close, and he would soon be able to make more visible movements in society. However, his first big plans required preparations, and those required that he enter Hogwarts Castle.

He hoped to be in the castle later, but he needed to have his tasks within the walls done before the Sorting, preferably several weeks before. He knew well that the Hat would need time to rewrite parts of his song, and he needed to double-check that the wards would hold up to an assault if one were to come.

Revenant's left arm suddenly blurred and the sword on his hip exploded from its sheath in a shining bronze arc, hacking a dog-sized Acromantula in half as it fell from the trees in ambush. Others in the trees chittered loudly at him, but suddenly the clicking became hesitant and the spiders melted away. Revenant did not slow down, and cleaned his sword of the giant spider's fluids on the edge of his ragged cloak, then returned it easily to its sheath.

He felt no fear at the Acromantula in the trees, and the Centaur just over the next rise gave him just as little concern. Neither was any threat to him. Both Centaurs and Acromantula were aware of him, and had been long before today when he most recently entered the forest. He had not entered into Hogwarts in many, many years but he had certainly watched over it from far off, even though he could not become involved in events, not yet.

His cloak billowed out above him as he leapt down a drop-off into a deep hollow in the ground and he came to a halt in front of a heavy stone door, finely carved with Hogwart's coat of arms but lacking a handle. It had only a slim rectangular keyhole in a round setting. He removed his sword from its sheath again and rammed the leaf-shaped blade into the keyhole of the door, then twisted it to the right.

 _Crack._

The mechanism that had locked the door for so many years gave reluctantly, but when the door swung open the hinges made no noise. Revenant pulled his blade from the slot in the door and returned it to his hip, then traveled onward into the passageway. The door closed on its own behind him. What little light filtered through the trees was cut off. The tunnel became completely dark.

Some time later, moving without any light or other visible guide, Revenant came to another door, also lacking a handle but with a slim rectangular keyhole yet again. This time it was carved with a different, strange coat of arms. A lit torch sat in a bracket on the wall next to it, the first light in the tunnel.

A round shield stood out most visibly with a Corinthian helmet perched on the top, empty eyes gazing to the left. In front of the shield a leaf bladed sword with an oddly shaped hilt was blade up, and a serpent wrapped around the blade. Its head stuck above the blade's tip and looked to the right. The sword's hilt appeared to be a sort of narrowed fleur-de-lis.

Revenant ignored the coat of arms and shoved his sword into the keyhole again, then turned it to open the door. The hilt of his sword matched the hilt of the one on the coat of arms exactly. The blade returned again to its sheath.

He slipped through the door into Hogwarts' network of secret passages, moving towards the Headmaster's office. The door slammed shut behind him with a hollow, echoing boom.

 **oo0oo**

One of the bookshelves in the Headmaster's office hinged backwards into the wall, and Revenant stepped out of the passage behind it. He gently pulled the shelf most of the way back out, but left it ajar so he could exit back through it when he was done.

He looked around the office and took in the whirring silver contraptions on the tables and shelves, Fawkes on his perch where he stared curiously at Revenant, and most importantly, the Sorting Hat sleeping on the shelf behind the desk. Fawkes gave Revenant a questioning sort of trill, and Revenant nodded at the Phoenix.

"Fawkes," he said in his metallic voice, "long time no see." Fawkes chirped his agreement. "My time has nearly come to return old friend. I may have need of you in the future." The phoenix nodded his head solemnly, black eyes looking at the heavy cloak and robes.

"Now, if you don't mind, I need to talk with Sebastian. The Castle needs us again, and while I heard of what the other three did after I left I never spent enough time here to find where they hid their stones." Fawkes gave a surprised sounding squawk, then nodded again.

Revenant stepped around Dumbledore's desk, ignoring all of the wards on the office that he really should have tripped by now but hadn't, and gently picked the Hat up off of his shelf. He plopped him onto his head over the hood, and then stood there and waited for the hat to awake.

The Hat did not seem to be caught off guard by Revenant's sudden appearance. "Welcome home Salazar." he said gruffly from on top of Revenant's head.

"Hello Sebastian," said Revenant pleasantly. The Hat frowned.

"You've had a rough time of things," Sebastian said quietly.

"I am well aware of that," Revenant responded. "I need you to tell the castle to send out the Stones. It is time for the secret to be revealed."

"I can see that. Thank you for not showing up an hour before the Sorting and telling me this. I may have a lot of practice, but even I take some time to write up my songs." The hat's pointed tip waved around.

"Thank you for agreeing with me. I wish you luck with your song." Revenant casually plucked the Hat off his head and returned it to its shelf. He walked back around the desk to the bookcase where it stood ajar.

"Salazar!" He stopped and looked back at the Hat. "Are you aware that the Ministry is trying to break the Charter?" Sebastian asked.

"I am. Rest assured, the Charter will stand as strong as it always has. I have a plan to deal with them," Revenant assured the Hat. Fawkes trilled again, a sound of support. Revenant nodded at the phoenix, and then disappeared back into the secret passage out of the office.

The Hat hummed from up on his shelf, and glanced at Fawkes. "Now what rhymes with future..."

 **oo0oo**

Revenant stepped out from behind the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy and nodded at the wall opposite. He waited a moment, then pulled his sword from its sheath and spun it in his left hand.

He touched the wall with the tip of the sword. " _Show me your heart..._ " he murmured. The sword sank into the wall suddenly, and he followed it through into a hemispherical chamber with an enormous granite monolith in the center. Every available surface of the room, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and the monolith itself, glowed a warm red from the thousands of runes engraved there.

Revenant peered around the room, and finally hummed in concern. There were whole sections of the ward array that had gone out! Here and there, dotted around the room, the power arrays that charged the wards were damaged, several completely dark! He looked closer at them, and realized that they had been overloaded somehow. The safeties that had been built into the room had held and only the charging arrays had failed, but that still meant that quite a few of the school's many defensive wards _would not function._ How had this happened?

Looking around, Revenant found that a number of the castle's most basic wards had also failed. The detection ward, used for finding black artifacts, had burnt out its power array. The array for the anti-travel wards was so badly damaged it was a minor miracle it still functioned, let alone blocked anything. The broomstick blocker was completely failed as well, and the flying carpet blocker was equally burnt up.

Revenant had hoped to use this time to activate the war wards and ready the castle for attacks. Clearly, that wouldn't happen. The many failed charging arrays would not have burnt themselves out unless other, extra wards were layered from a secondary wardroom. Revenant could think of only one such room where these wards were likely to have been placed, the ward room beneath the floor of the Great Hall.

Based on the addition of extra, unneeded wards that melted the power arrays in the Primary wardroom, Revenant could only assume that a thousand years of fool Headmasters added wards every time the headship changed hands, regardless of whether they were needed or not.

Revenant growled to himself. He could not fix these failures. He didn't have the needed materials on him, and could not retrieve any either. He would have to wait until after the term started. By then, the three Stones should have performed their duties and he would have assistance in turning the wards back on.

Revenant turned around and pushed back through the wall he had entered through. He still had to get Petunia out of the tower too.

 **oo0oo**

Within the Ministry's evidence containment facility, held under heavy wards and guarded by a full squad of Hitwizards at all times since the theft of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's wand the summer before, all of Harry Potter's belongings sat where they had been dropped after their removal from Number Four Privet Drive. Until he was found, all of his personal items were considered evidence in his kidnapping. Even if he did show back up, his more valuable things would likely become _lost_ in the Ministry vaults. If they later reappeared in Minister Fudge's fingers, or possibly in the Malfoy's possession, well clearly anyone who said the item was stolen _must be mistaken._

This would not be an issue. Under the eyes of the guards, without any disturbance in the wards, all of them disappeared at once.

An alarm was raised, but none of Harry Potter's possessions would reappear for quite some time. The Unspeakables were even called in.

The leader of the investigation, a short guy in ragged robes, came up short and could find no evidence of the thief.

 **oo0ooOoo0oo**

 _ **5 July 1995**  
Noon_

Revenant strolled past the two guards into Gringotts Bank and stood in one of the lines. He got a few odd looks for his stained clothing and sword. He ignored them all.

When he reached the head of the line, he nodded slightly at the teller.

"Good afternoon Master Teller," the person behind him in line jumped slightly at the metallic, inhuman tone of his voice, "I have an appointment with Account Manager Snarlfang. Please inform him that Revenant has arrived."

The teller nodded again, and Revenant marveled at how rigid the protocols of Gringotts were. The teller ducked behind his counter and reappeared a moment later. "Follow Guthook Mister Revenant. He will bring you to Account Manager Snarlfang," the goblin grunted. Another goblin appeared at the end of the counter. "Next!" shouted the teller before Revenant could politely wish his scales well, so he merely strolled over to the waiting Guthook.

Revenant followed Guthook through the halls of the bank, and eventually was stopped in front of a dark wooden door. Guthook knocked twice.

"Enter!" called a deep, gravelly voice through the door. Guthook nodded, and Revenant twisted the knob and pushed into the room.

It was brutally efficient, with heavy wooden filing cabinets lining the walls and a heavier wooden desk in the center. A heavyset goblin sat in a wooden rolling chair behind the desk, scowling at the door. As soon as he saw it was Revenant entering, his scowl morphed into a toothy smile and he spun the chair around to open the cabinet behind him. He pulled a thick file out and deposited it on his desk.

"Mister Revenant!" Snarlfang growled, "Have you shown iron today, friend?" A set of polished silver daggers suddenly appeared in his hands as he set them down on his desk next to the file.

Revenant smoothly pulled his bronze sword from its sheath and placed it between the two daggers, pointing the opposite way.

"I am afraid not, Account Manager Snarlfang. I have, however, shown bronze as always," he said back. Snarlfang jerked a nod and looked disdainfully at the sword where it sat on his desk.

"You still use that piece of Druid bronze? I have said before that the Nation would gladly create a blade to outmatch that, and you turn me down every time!" Snarlfang grumbled.

"I am aware," Revenant stated. "You also try that offer every time you see me. That blade has seen more than most, and its story has not ended yet. I will likely carry it for as long as I walk this Earth. I have no need of the Nation's services for the foreseeable future." The two beings paused and glanced at the blades on the desk.

"Regardless, to business. Have you reactivated the accounts I asked for?" Revenant asked. Snarlfang nodded.

"I have indeed. It took some finagling but the Potter accounts are ready to earn profit once again."

"Excellent. Let us discuss our next move."

 **oo0ooOoo0oo**

 **Author's Note: So, this is the second chapter. Finally. I have one more chapter to go through, then the fun really starts. This is sort of a filler/setup chapter, where a lot of major events that will occur later are kickstarted.**

 **Also, now you know who the Figure in Gray is! Or do you? Why does he always keep his hood up? And what is with that strange coat of arms?**

 **Cheers all. Erebus out.**

 **This chapter published initially 6/10/2019.**


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